Ripple Effect
by ariel1200s
Summary: Max has escaped Manticore and is living with Lucy until a demon shows up with John hot on its heels. After defeating the demon, John takes Max, who shows extreme capabilities, to Bobby for further training. After living with Bobby, Max begins to tag-along with the Winchester boys. What could possibly go wrong?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: If it's posted on FF, it's most likely ****_not _****original. At least not completely…**

**Also, I would like to say, Pulse does not happen and Papa Winchester does not die. I get tired of reading "re-writes" of the seasons that don't actually change anything expect by adding another character and changing a little bit of the dialogue here and there. So to help you get an idea of how different this will be…well, as I said, John will not be dying. At least, not by trading his life for Dean's.**

**Los Angeles, California**

Max covered her ears, trying to ignore the noises that she was hearing. It was pointless though. The government had created her to pick up footsteps from a hundred feet away, so the sounds of her sister being stabbed to death from ten feet away were absolutely deafening. Even from behind the door she could see absolutely everything that was going on. She could envision his cold, black eyes as he murdered his own daughter.

Lucy.

She had once again taken the fall for Max. It was no different from any other time. Since she had met her on vacation at her aunt's, Lucy had been very protective of her. She invited her back home as a stow-away in Los Angeles. Her mother had found out about Max and decided to cover for the girls, thinking that a friend would be a good thing for Lucy.

It had been. It had given the young girl a new purpose in life when her father started getting progressively worse.

For some reason, Lucy had gone to great lengths to keep Max from getting punished from her dad, as if she was trying to keep something pure in her life. Max was still trying to figure out what was normal in this life. She kept quiet most of the time and observed. One thing she had learned, though, was that she did not respect Lucy's father, Jack.

He stayed at home all day with his wife making the money that he effortlessly drank away day after day. The girls were in charge of the house chores for the most part. Max knew that all males were not like this because she had been raised in the military facility, Manticore. And while she hated her CO, Lydecker, with every fiber of her transgenic being, she also respected him. He was not lazy. He did things with a purpose, though sometimes at the expense of her unit's lives. And though Lydecker had been more deadly of the two men, at least Lydecker had rationality. Jack could be fine one second, and then he could explode for no apparent reason the next.

Like he had done today. He had been taking Lucy into his bedroom to "help her clean." Max knew what he really did to her in there—what with her transgenic hearing. By the way Lucy acted afterwards, Max had been able to pick up that the sort of things he was doing was not normal. She even realized that it was most likely very wrong.

Today, when he had come for Lucy and placed his hand on her shoulder as he looked at Max, Max had been unwilling to hide the hatred in her eyes for this man. She had glared him down, feeling bold from the knowledge that she could take him down without a sweat with nothing more than her thumb and forefinger. She had put up with a lot right after her escape in her desperation to blend in and her lack of knowledge of the "outside world." But she was tired of seeing the way Lucy acted afterwards. She was positive this was wrong.

Jack had seen this defiance in her eyes, as had Lucy. Lucy had shoved Max out of the room, begged her with her eyes to not make things worse, and worked on slamming the door. And in that split second before the door had shut, Max had seen Jack's eyes flash solid black.

The smile that had been on his face was enough to scare her frozen out here, tears rolling down her face.

The horrible sounds of knife slicing through skin, tendon, and bones made her weep like no torture method back at Manticore had been able to do.

She knew her best bet now was to run. She had heard the gurgling sound of her sister's lung being punctured long ago. Any movements aside from the knife had stopped. She was positive Lucy was dead. Mostly likely, she would be next to die.

She just didn't know if she cared any more. This was the life she had nearly died to escape to. Was everyone around her destined to die?

There was the sound of wood breaking downstairs. Max didn't turn to acknowledge it though. She should have been full of pain, but she was empty inside. She didn't want to try anymore.

Thumps sounded as someone ran up the stairs. Max knew they could see her now, standing in the hall with tears running down her face. They had to know that someone was being stabbed behind the door she refused to leave. It could have been Lydecker there to drag her back to Manticore, and she wouldn't have cared a bit.

It wasn't Lydecker though.

Rough hands grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. She was looking up in the face of a gruff and rugged man. He had the deepest, brown eyes.

"Are you okay," he asked even as his eyes scanned her over to answer the question for himself. He must think she was in shock or something. Maybe she was.

She tried to speak. "My sister," she said but her voice was broken.

His eyes saddened as if he understood her though. "I need you to go outside for me. Can you do that? Run from here and find somewhere safe."

Max nodded her head, and the man pushed her towards the stairs as he turned his attention toward the door. Max watched his movements.

Living with Jack had long ago taken the reaction to immediately obey a command out of her system. He took advantage of her obedience in the beginning, and she had learned from Lucy that all orders did not need to be followed unless necessary.

For some reason, Max did not feel the need to follow these orders either.

She watched as the man held a gun in one hand, and pulled what looked similar to Jack's canteen of whiskey out of a pocket with his other hand. She caught the inscription of a cross on the container as it caught the light. There was no other time for observations though, because the man was raising his foot and kicking Lucy's door open. He entered the room in a familiar fashion. He clearly had had military training, and that was what it took to break Max from her stupor.

She stepped up to the doorway.

She saw the man splashing a clear liquid into Jack's face. She was shocked when it started to vaporize and burn Jack. He thrashed around, faster than what Max believed humans could move. When he stopped thrashing, he focused on the man with a cruel smile and pitch black eyes.

With a jerk of his head, Jack had flung the man into the wall, forcing the man to drop the canteen and his weapon.

Jack smiled and walked up to him. In a voice that was much deeper than Jack's, he said, "John Winchester. I don't believe I've had the pleasure of meeting you personally, though I've heard a lot about you."

The man, John, who couldn't seem to move from the wall spoke back. "If you've heard so much about me, then you know you're about to go straight back to hell where you belong."

Max was unsure about what was going on. She had been living with this family for a few months, and she had never seen things like this before. Jack hadn't been able to move things with his mind, so why could he now? She was confused as to what was normal and what was not. She had read books in the library to try to understand what had to be kept secret and what was not a secret. Even in the books where characters could be telekinetic, it was always a kept secret. She was sure it wasn't an everyday thing for people to be able to move things with their minds. If it was, it was something that Manticore would have trained them for. How could she help this man who had probably saved her life if she couldn't even get close to Jack?

Her best plan of action was a sneak attack. John's gun was laying a few feet from the doorway, but she didn't even think about going for it. She had never liked guns since she had seen one of her sisters shot down the night of their escape from Manticore. That left her with the canteen of liquid.

Jack laughed, startling her and raising goosebumps up and down her spine. It was a very predatory, scary laugh. "That's rich," he said with a chuckle. "You are pinned to a wall. What can you possibly do?"

John smirked. "I have backup on the way."

Even Max could tell that was a lie, but she figured that the two were distracted enough that she could be his backup. She knew that to be able to get past Jack and to the canteen that she would have to run faster than she usually would in front of humans. This could put her identity in jeopardy, but she owed it to the stranger who had saved her.

She blurred into the room, kicking the gun over to the wall near John. She made it to the canteen just as Jack was turning his head away from the sound of the gun sliding across the floor.

She opened the canteen and threw the water at Jack. He hissed as the water seemed to boil off of him. She splashed him again. John fell from the wall, but she now had a problem as Jack was turning his attention on her.

"Well aren't you an interesting little thing," he said as he advanced on her. It was as if he hadn't lived with her for the past three months.

She went to splash more liquid on him but realized it was empty. She looked down and saw that most of it had flowed out on the floor when it landed open on its side.

"What's wrong kitten, all out of juice?" Jack purred.

There was the weird sensation of a jerk from the middle of her stomach, and the next thing she knew, she was flying backwards through the air and colliding hard with a wall. Bits of plaster rained down into her short brunette hair.

"You messed with the wrong demon," Jack said as he advanced on her, his eyes flashing back to black.

Max wondered what he meant by demon.

There was the sound of a gun being cocked just as she had thought she was going to die.

"Obviously not," John said from the side of Jack. Then a blast went off in the small room.

Max slid down the wall and to the floor landing somewhat clumsily. She had a hard time hearing, but what she was seeing was shocking her to the core.

Jack had fallen to his knees as his chest was blossoming red, but he had frozen there as his head tilted back and was letting out an ungodly storm of black smoke.

John was shouting something, she could tell from the way he was gesturing at her, but she couldn't really pull her attention from the black clouds that seemed to be heading towards her.

She wondered, is that what Jack had meant when he had said demon?

And then the furious smoke was slamming into her through her mouth, and she blacked out.

She came to and realized her eyes were already open, staring at John.

He had a gun aimed at her.

This confused her. Had he not seen the way she had tried to help him?

She opened her mouth to ask him so, but was shocked when she laughed instead.

She could feel her lungs moving and air being forced out in a chuckle, and it sounded vaguely like her voice, but it definitely wasn't her.

"What's wrong, Johnny boy? Can't shoot a little girl?" she found herself asking him.

John cocked his gun. "I wouldn't be too sure," he said, but he didn't fire.

It was too late though. Max raised her hand and John was suddenly being slammed back against the wall.

So it really was a demon that had been inside Jack. And now it was inside her. It was in her mind, controlling her actions.

She immediately started compartmentalizing her mind. This was something Manticore had taught her to do with pain, but she figured that if she didn't try, then there really wouldn't be a way out of this situation.

To her surprise, it didn't take her long to find the foreign invasion. It was a putrid, black energy in control of her body, but she was trained heavily on how to control her own body. She threw her mental self against the energy with a great shove.

It heaved her physical body over. She actually made her hand twitch for a split second, but then the black energy hit back and held onto the control with an ironclad grasp.

It righted her body back up. John was giving her a wary stare, but the demon was too busy looking inside now to care what John was seeing on the outside.

"You think you can control me, little girl?" the demon seethed in her voice. "I am older than you by _centuries!_"

Max ignored that. She could easily read the distraction tactics in his words. He _was _worried, even if he was centuries older.

Max shoved against the black mass again. It caused them to fall to their knees in the physical world.

No, not their knees. _Her _knees. And her body.

"What _are_ you?" it croaked with _her _voice.

Max just let out a small mental smile and slammed into the weakened mass. She had it flailing now, inside her own body. She felt for a second she could trap it, but she didn't want to risk what would happen if she had to fight it back under control again. Now that she had command of her body, she could feel the toll everything had taken on her.

Instead of keeping it trapped, she flung it from her. She dropped to her hands and knees as the smoke poured from her body.

She stayed down on the floor panting until her arms gave way. She fell to her side, staring across the floor at the mangled body of her sister.

She heard a rustle from where John had been before she blacked out completely.

DASDASDASDASDASDASDASDAS

She came to after a nightmare about Lucy, only to remember everything with a startling abruptness and realize that the reality of what had happened was so much worse.

Even as Max thought of the good memories she had of Lucy, images of her last view of her sister, stabbed and mangled, were superimposing their selves over top her thoughts. She couldn't get the horror of losing yet another sibling, albeit an adopted one, out of her head. Surely demons and murder and abuse were not the things Zack had in mind when he came up with the idea of an escape plan. If it was, they had traded one hell for another.

Her one good thing on the outside had been taken away. She felt like she could not get that innocence back if she tried.

Living with Lucy and her parents had been the only thing she had known since her escape from Manticore. She wasn't sure what she would do now.

Max didn't even realize it, but Lucy's mother, Joann Barrett, could very possibly still be alive. She had been at work while all of this had happened. Max could stay with her, after all, she had taken her in once before.

Max thought about having to deal with the emotional damage that a mother would suffer from finding out about her entire family being killed. It would destroy most mothers. When it came to Lucy's mother though, Max wasn't entirely sure. Whenever things got a little tense in the household with Jack's temper spiking, Mrs. Barrett would always seem to have mandatory overtime at work. It seemed to Max that Mrs. Barrett went to a lot of trouble to keep her ignorance about the extent of Jack's temper out of mind and existence—something that made Max respect her almost less than Jack Barrett himself.

The thought of seeing Mrs. Barrett become so upset over her daughter's death, one that would have happened regardless of whether or not Jack was being controlled by a demon and one that could have been prevented by Mrs. Barrett having enough guts to leave her husband would probably incite Max.

After being around Mrs. Barrett, she figured that not having a mother at all was probably better in the long run anyway. She knew how to keep quiet enough that she could get by and blend in now. She had gone to the store with Lucy and her mom many times. She saw how children acted. She may not understand why they acted like they did, but she figured she could mimic a girl her age if she needed to. And sometimes, when Jack would pass out in his room, Max and Lucy would watch television. Surprisingly, cartoons were quite educational to someone who didn't know a thing about normal life and culture. Certainly, the commercials were the biggest clue that Lucy's family was not quite right compared to the numerous clips of happy families and caring parents.

Max often found herself wishing her unit had found families like that to take them in. She couldn't bear the thought of her siblings going through the same things she had to, although she was the youngest of them all and they often felt the need to protect her—hence to why they ran away when they did. Max was beginning to have seizures, and it got progressively worse until she was no longer able to hide it. The guards had seen her and were going to take her away. Zack, the unit leader and brother, had rebelled trying to protect her. If they took you away when you were having seizures, then you were most likely not coming back. Zack didn't agree with that, so the unit broke out and escaped.

"Good, you're awake," a voice said.

Max opened her eyes, wondering how he had known she was awake. She was on a bed in a room that looked similar to what families on vacation stayed in. It was big and open and had two double beds with a door that led to a bathroom and a door that led outside. The quickest and most unobstructed way out, however, would be through the large window next to the front door. It was closer to where John was, but if she risked going to the bathroom, it was possible there wouldn't be a window in there at all. If that was the case, then John would have her cornered in a room and all the advantage of surprise would be gone. No, if push came to shove, Max would be taking the large window and John too, if he got in her way.

Max focused back on the man who had saved her life. He was tall and gruff. He was somewhere in his low forties, but he seemed ages younger than Jack had. He had a hard edge to him, probably from the military training she had seen in his movements as he went to take the demon on. It kept him muscular and fit. He didn't have any obvious weapons on him, but he also was facing her with his arms folded and his legs crossed at the feet. It left many possibilities open. He could have a gun just on the side of his chest, a holster on his ankles, and any number of things strapped to his back—though, from the way he leaned against the wall, it didn't seem likely that he had anything large there or his posture would be different.

"You're a very attentive little girl, you know that," John said with a slight smile.

Max met his eyes squarely. She had already shown her secrets in a way when she had distracted the demon for him. There wasn't much point in pretending with him.

"How did you know to come to Lucy's house?"

His eyes seemed to be just as calculating as hers. "I had been tracking something that led me there."

Max sensed that was a rather evasive answer. "The demon," she said.

The man sighed, as if that had answered one of his questions but that he didn't necessarily like the answer. "Yes, the demon."

Max was glad that he was not talking to her like most adults she had met on the outside did. It was as if he sensed that she was more capable and intelligent than normal. In a way, it reminded her of her old commanding officer, Lydecker. This was definitely a dangerous man. Max knew the less she said, the less he would know about her, but she had so many questions. "That demon could move things with its mind."

"Yes," John said. "They are very dangerous. We are both lucky to be alive."

"I don't believe in luck," Max said almost reflexively.

John's eyes seemed to spark. "Oh really? What do you believe in?"

Max knew that he was amused, but Zack's response was so ingrained into her, that it had been an automatic reply. So, she explained, "I believe in a well-thought out plan executed with precision and skill."

"Sometimes," John said after a moment, "you don't have time to plan."

Max frowned. "Going in without a plan puts the whole team in jeopardy."

"It does," John said with a nod, "But it also saved you."

Max thought about that. Her unit didn't have a plan either when they escaped Manticore.

"So," John said, "That wasn't your family back at the house?"

Max kept her face neutral.

"You called it Lucy's house," John went on explaining. "I'm assuming Lucy was the girl. I'm sorry about your loss."

Max looked down and gave a short, brisk nod.

"Do you have somewhere else to stay?" John asked after a moment of silence.

The moment of truth was here. Max wondered what she should do. This man had burst into Lucy's house without a plan or any backup because he was trying to save lives. He put his life at great risk. Max doubted he would be okay with letting a nine year old girl just go off on her own.

"Perhaps some of your own family," John prompted.

"They died in a house fire when I was a baby," Max said, giving the story she had come up with for Lucy and her family. Usually, everyone seemed to buy it and would react with sympathy and discomfort. John seemed to become even more intense. Max felt the need to offer more information. "I lived with my grandparents after that until I was eight. One died by a drunk driver, and the other died a month later from a heart attack."

There was a heavy silence in the air. Max got the distinct feeling that John wanted to question her but was holding back for some reason.

"I never met my mom's parents; they died before I was born. I don't have any aunts or uncles."

"So you're alone," John concluded.

"Not exactly," Max said. "Lucy had a mother. Joann Barrett. She was at work."

"Oh," he said. "You want to stay with her?"

"Yes, sir," she said. "I think that would be best. I can walk from here if you give me directions."

"Nonsense," he said. "I'll drive you."

Max already guessed he would say that, so she just nodded and got up from the bed. She wasn't physically injured, but she still felt sluggish and slow.

"That was some stunt you pulled back there," John said.

Max was surprised that he hadn't brought it up sooner.

"You're a brave kid."

Max went with a partial truth. "My grandfather was a ranger in the army. When I saw you enter the room, it broke me from my shock."

John looked like he had guessed as much. "I was a marine. Did your grandfather give you training?"

"Yes," Max said, slowly moving her muscles and calculating how slow she was. "He was strict, but he usually had his reasons."

John gave a nod at her. "A lot of people feel that way after a possession."

"What way," Max said, putting a name to what the demon had done to her. She had been possessed by a demon.

"Disoriented, sluggish, out of sync," he said. He paused for a long time before he said, "Were your grandparents hunters?"

Max frowned, put off from the question as it clashed with what she knew about hunting. She tried to keep her answer neutral. "My grandfather liked to eat squirrel and deer. He said it was healthier."

John nodded but didn't say anything more on the subject.

Max wondered what had caused him to ask such a random question. They had been talking about the demon possessing people, and then all of a sudden he asked if her grandparents were hunters.

Then Max remembered what he had said about following the demon, as if he had been tracking it.

"Well come on, short-stop," John said. "We should probably get you back to Mrs. Barrett."

"Max," she said.

"Max," John said with a smile. "Well, come on Max. Daylight is wasting."


	2. Chapter 2

John drove her back from what she figured out was a motel.

He pulled up on the street outside her house and looked at it. There were police all over the place.

Max didn't want to get out, and John wasn't making any moves to get out either.

Max was looking at Mrs. Barrett who was outside talking to a police officer and crying. It took all of her will to keep from glaring at the lady she blamed Lucy's death on, somewhat irrationally. If Lucy's mother had just left her husband a long time ago, instead of ignoring all of the signs of abuse both girls had sported, then all of this wouldn't have happened. Max kept her face neutral.

John glanced back at her and noticed her stare. He followed her line of sight. "Is that Mrs. Barrett?"

Max nodded.

"She is taking this pretty hard," John said neutrally, "But she also just lost her whole family."

Max thought about that. How would she feel if she had lost her whole unit in such a violent and unexplained way?

Maybe John had something behind the whole idea that a plan isn't the most important thing if lives are at stake. If her unit was on the brink of being annihilated, she knew that she would want someone to risk it and possibly save their lives.

Max noticed commotion from the doorway. They were bringing out a stretcher with a body under a red-stained sheet.

"Tell you what, Max," John said, noticing the bodies as well. "How about I take you out for lunch. You don't need to be around here for all of this."

Max didn't feel the need to argue with him. She didn't want to be spotted by any officer that could ID her later for Lydecker. Her hair hadn't quite grown out long enough to cover up her barcode yet. She had only been out of Manticore for a few months, and there, they kept all of their hair in a military buzz.

Max just nodded her head in answer.

John put the truck in gear and drove slowly away from the scene. Both of them had their eyes on all the officers crawling all over the city-house property looking for answers. Max shifted a little down in the seat.

Lunch was a quick affair. They had McDonald's drive-through in the truck.

"Well, Max," John said ten minutes after they finished their meal. "I can take you back to the house, they are probably gone by now."

Max didn't make any movement to answer him.

"Or," he said, "If you still need some time away, I can take you somewhere."

Max looked at him at that.

"You want to go somewhere?" he asked. "Where? The park?"

"The library," Max said.

He frowned but put the truck in gear. "Okay."

Max showed him where to park. Getting the TV from Jack was always a rare occasion. Sometimes, she would get the chance to sneak out of the house and go to the library. It was her favorite place to go to. Lucy's mom had taken them there once, but she had usually been too busy working overtime. She had learned the most about the outside world through books she read. Books were something magical to a person who had only been given statistical, technical, and factual readings during her upbringing at Manticore.

John entered the library with her.

The librarian greeted Max with a warm smile. "Hello, Max. How are you today?"

"I'm good," Max said back with a small smile.

Apparently news of what had happened at Lucy's house had not yet reached her. Max was glad.

Max started to head off to the books. She knew where every title in the library was and knew exactly what she needed right now. Before she could get very far, a hand stopped her on her shoulder.

She tensed a little as she spun around.

"Hey, Max," John said. "I'm going to step outside for a little bit and make a couple of calls. I'll be back in a few minutes, okay?"

Max nodded and spun around to go to back to where she had been heading, the stairs.

She climbed to the third floor and made a sharp turn left. She counted rows as she passed them until she hit sixteen. She turned down that row and started counting bays until she reached the right one.

She preferred the Library of Congress way of organizing books to the Dewey decimal system. With Library of Congress, all of the books were sorted by category and subject rather than author. And right now, she was in the supernatural section.

She figured she had approximately twenty minutes before John finished his phone calls and started looking for her. The library had six floors, being rather large since it served a large portion of Los Angeles. It would take him probably forty minutes to search all of the floors to find her granting that he started in the basement. She had work to do.

She was most interested in demons, so she sought out the demonology books first. She skimmed through the first three books, finding as many similarities as there were differences between the three. It was frustrating to try to find out what was real and what was not.

She did deduce that the canteen that had worked so well on the demon was holy water, but she assumed the ways for killing the demon that were listed were all bogus otherwise John probably would've used his gun first instead of the holy water.

John had said something about sending the demon back to hell. She assumed he had been talking about an exorcism, and there was plenty about them but, again, she didn't know what was real or not.

As she was reading the next book about demons, there was also mention of other creatures often associated with them, such as hellhounds and devil's dogs, as well as specific types of demons like crossroads demons. There even seemed to be a hierarchy.

Max began to wonder. If demons were real, were the others real too? Did John just hunt demons or did he hunt more than just demons?

She began to read other books as well on just the supernatural in general. She was soaking in every word to her photographic memory. Her analytical mind was constantly comparing similarities and differences, systematically putting more importance on things that were common factors among numerous sources over the tidbits that were only in one source and, more often than not, seemed completely outlandish.

It had been exactly an hour and she had been through the entire supernatural section. Granted, she had been speed reading a little bit. Had she had three hours, she could have memorized every bit of those two hundred books. But she didn't want to be caught in the supernatural section.

Max put the last book she had been reading back on the shelf and stood up. She headed back down the row. On her way out, she grabbed _Eragon_, a favorite of hers. She had read it many times.

She sat at the end of the row, her back propped against the shelf and her knees holding the book. She opened it to a spot that she knew would be a normal amount for a person to have read in an hour and began reading.

She only had to wait ten minutes before John opened the stairwell door and looked around until he spotted her. He walked over to her and crouched down.

"Good book, huh?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Do you feel better?"

She looked up this time and nodded at him.

"Alright, then," he said. "I made a few calls. The police have left your house now. Are you ready to go home?"

Max just shut the book and stood up. She placed it on the shelf again and returned to John. They headed down the stairs and out to the truck.

The whole drive back, Max thought of her plan. Even as they pulled up to the house, she was running probabilities and scenarios in her head. John parked the truck.

They sat in silence for a moment.

All of the lights in the house were on. Mrs. Barrett, or _Ms_. Barrett, must still be up.

Max opened her door and got out of the truck.

She looked at John for a moment. He gave her a small smile. She gave a sad one back.

"Thank you," she said.

"No, thank you, Max," John said. "You saved my life too."

Max gave a small nod and then shut the door. She started a slow walk up to her house.

The closer she got, the more pronounced the smell of rotten eggs—which she had figured out was sulfur—and blood became. It was awful.

She continued on though, heading to the front door as slow as she could, all the while, waiting and praying for the sound of the truck to start and pull away.

She reached the front door.

John's truck still hadn't started.

She stood there for a long moment. If she went in now, Ms. Barrett would see her and know she was alive. Max could hear her now in the kitchen over the sound of the TV. Right now, Ms. Barrett probably assumed she was dead, taken and killed by the person who had killed her family. It was probably what the police assumed as well. Even if they were looking for her, at best, all they had was a description of her. Max had been careful to stay out of photos. No photos and missing-assumed dead was a good standing point to leave.

If Max went inside to get John to leave, Ms. Barrett could insist on getting a photo of her, probably having felt embarrassed earlier when she was asked by police for a photo of her for an amber alert and only been able to provide a description. Max could easily slip away later on, but then Ms. Barrett would assume she had run away and would send every force she could to find her last remnants of a family she had lost.

Max didn't want to do that to her, give her hope and take it away.

Ms. Barrett would be better off without her in her life.

The truck never started to take off. Max knew she was going to have to use her backup plan.

She turned around and headed back to the truck. She got in.

"Max?"

"I have something to tell you," she said. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "My grandparents were hunters."

There was silence in the truck.

It seemed to drag on forever.

"Of animals," John supplied, but it sounded like a question.

"No, of demons," she said. And then she took a big risk, "Of the supernatural."

The silence was back in the car.

She carried on, having crafted her story to the best of her ability with only the information she had gathered. "I didn't want to tell you because my grandparents didn't want any hunters to know I was related to them. They said they had a falling out with a couple of hunters and that others might resent me for sharing their blood."

John seemed to understand this. "What were their names?"

Max paused, considering.

"I won't hold a grudge against you," John said.

The only reason he would want to know was so he could research her family and her. Would it be a good idea?

"I'm sorry," Max said. "I don't know. They never told me their last name, and I think the last name they gave me was fake."

John frowned. "Why do you say that?"

"Because," Mas said, on a roll, "I was never allowed to go to school because they couldn't produce a birth certificate for me."

"You've never been to school?" he asked.

"No," Max said. "I was only with Lucy for a short amount of time, and they tried to enroll me that winter, but the schools were too full at the time. They were going to wait on a spot to open up in the fall."

"What did your grandparents say your name was?" he asked.

"Max Guevara," she said.

John seemed to be on the edge of buying it.

"How do you think I knew how to keep that demon away with holy water?" she pressed. "Why do you think I wasn't scared? How do you think I knew how to kick out that demon when it was possessing me?"

He looked at her sharply. "Your grandparents taught you how to kick out a demon?"

Max backpedaled a little, sensing that she had erred in some way. "Kind of, it took a long time."

"Hmm," John said, looking at her, calculating.

"So why are you telling me this now?" he asked.

"Because," Max said and then paused.

Why didn't she just take off? Sure John would have followed her, but she could have lost him. She had always excelled at escape and evade at Manticore, and she had evaded a whole army after all.

Max thought long and hard. John seemed patient to wait her out, and some sort of decision seemed to be hanging on her answer.

Because she wanted to help people like John did, because she wanted to prevent the grief of other families from going through what Lucy's had to, and because she wanted someone there for her unit who would take the risks John was willing to take.

"Because, I never really got along with Lucy's mom all that well," Max started, "But I still don't think she deserved what happened to her family. Lucy didn't deserve that either."

If John noticed her lack of sympathy for Jack, he didn't mention it.

"I want more people out there who would be willing to take the risks that you are willing to take in order to stop more families from suffering what Lucy's did."

"It's not all about risk either, Max," John warned.

"No," she agreed, "But I have training, so I would be an asset."

John was quiet. Max wondered what was going through his mind.

It was hard to tell with him.

"I'm not gonna lie, short-stop," he said. "I don't have room for another person on my hunts."

Max immediately nodded, even as she tried to fight back tears. She hadn't known how much she wanted to go with him and help people until he had forced her to explain it. It had originally just been a temporary plan. But his rejection stung too much for it to have been a means to an end.

"But," John said, looking out the front windshield, "I do know someone who could use someone like you around."

Max looked up immediately, feeling hope for possibly the first time since she met Lucy building a snowman.

"Really?" Max asked, not daring to let herself get too excited.

John let out a small laugh. "Yeah, really."

He turned the key to start the truck and pulled away from the curb into the quiet street.

"You better buckle up, short-stop. We have a long drive ahead of us."

Max immediately buckled up. "Where are we heading to?"

"Sioux Falls," he said.

Max recalled the atlas they had been forced to memorize at Manticore. It didn't have Sioux Falls on it, so it must not be a very big city.

"Where's that?" she asked.

"South Dakota."

South Dakota was at least a 20 hour drive from here, without stopping. Depending on where Sioux Falls was in South Dakota, it could take more than that as well.

"That's a long drive," Max said slowly, wondering why he was going so far out of his way.

"You get used to it," John said back.

Max stayed silent.

John glanced over at her and seemed to understand. "Don't worry too much. I was heading this way anyway. There are a few hunts along the way that we can check out."

Max nodded, glancing at the clock. It read, 1900 hours. Max usually kept herself on the same sleep regime that she had been given at Manticore, which was 0500 until lights out at 0100. At least, for those transgenic super-soldiers that had shark DNA in their blood. For the rest of her unit, it was 0600 to 2400. That was how Max had been so naturally paired with her sister, Jondy. They both were the only ones in their unit with shark DNA. And even four hours of sleep a night was sometimes too much, so they would talk to each other in sign language to pass the time. Usually though, Manticore worked them hard enough that they needed every bit of those four hours of sleep.

Max didn't know what the plan was though, so even though it was only seven in the evening, she leaned her head back and tried to make herself fall asleep. She didn't know if John always hunted in the day like he did back at Lucy's, but it would be better to be prepared.

She started to think about Lucy again, trying to make sense of what had happened. She had a question that had been burning into her mind since she had found out that Jack had been possessed, but she didn't want to ask John and make him figure out that she actually hadn't been raised by hunters.

She thought on it another hour or so, but the question was too important to her.

"John," she asked.

"Yeah?"

She waited a moment. "How…how long was Jack possessed for?"

She held her breath and waited.

John's hands tightened on the steering wheel a little. "I don't know for sure, short-stop. I was on his tail, but it's hard to give an exact amount."

Max frowned, but pressed on. "Well, if you had to give a maximum amount of time that he could have been possessed, what would you say?"

John let out a sigh and rubbed a hand over his face. Instead of answering her, he looked at her and caught her eye. "Why do you ask?"

Max just shrugged, evasive.

John looked back to the road. "If I had to guess, I would say he couldn't have been possessed more than three days, max."

Three days max.

Max was relieved in a way. She had thought for a second that maybe Jack had been possessed the whole time she had been with them and felt maybe a little guilty that they had shot him. But they hadn't. Jack had been a mean drunkard of his own will well before the demon showed up.

"That answer your question?" John asked.

Max nodded and went back to staring out at the bland scenery. It was dark, but she could see clearly as long as there was at least a little light.

She leaned her head back again.

She thought of all that she had read about again, micro-organizing information and trying to understand all that she had absorbed. It was all in an effort to avoid thinking about her lost sister.

Her sister that had been killed by a demon.

Max wondered what kind of luck her other siblings were having.

It was 2400 now.

The stars were, without a doubt, the most interesting thing to look at in the middle of a barren dessert.

She tried to count them, but gave up.

She used her telescopic vision to zoom in on the moon. It wasn't quite full, but it was big and beautiful.

John played rock music from a cassette player. It was strangely soothing.

Max shivered a little, surprised that the desert could be so cold at night. It wasn't anything she couldn't handle. It had been winter when her unit broke out from Manticore, dressed in nightgowns and socks. She had even fallen through a frozen-over lake into the water. It was what saved her. She had held her breath in the frigid water for five minutes, watching through the ice as soldiers marched right over the top of her, searching for her unit.

Max wondered if Jondy was looking up at the same sky at this moment, plagued by her shark DNA, unable to fall asleep.

It was Max's last waking thought.


	3. Chapter 3

Max woke up as the sound of the truck idled down from its steady roar. She looked around.

They were at a gas station. It was much hotter now than it had been during the night. She looked down to see that there had been a men's jacket over her legs.

John glanced over at her as he pulled out his wallet. He selected a credit card. Max telescoped in on the credit card. The name said John Quagmire. "Morning," John said.

"Morning?" Max asked, disbelieving that she had slept so long. It was already 0800. The demon must have taken a bigger toll on her than she had believed. She carefully folded the jacket and set it in the middle seat.

John got out of the truck and started the pump after swiping John Quagmire's card. As it filled, he came back to the window and looked in. "Are you hungry?"

Max nodded a little. "Are there bathrooms around here?"

"Yeah, in the store somewhere," John said, taking out some cash. "Why don't you go to the bathroom and pick us out something to eat."

Max nodded, taking the twenty. She looked out her window, casually checking the building out. There were windows all along the front like most gas stations. There was only one security camera that she could spot inside and two on the outside.

She pulled her shirt down in the front and up in the back to help hide her barcode at the back of her neck. Barcodes had been Manticore's way of identifying them. She was X5-332960073452, or X5-452 for short. She couldn't wait till her hair was long enough to hide her barcode. She was sure that Manticore was using the tattoos to hunt down her siblings.

She walked into the gas station. The cashier gave her a cursory glance, but he had obviously seen her come from John's truck and wasn't too worried.

She looked around and spotted the bathrooms.

After she was done, she came back out into the store and looked around.

John was pretty fit, but did that mean he liked healthy food or exercised enough hunting things that he didn't need to worry?

It was hard to decide. In the end, Max selected a box of plain donuts, milk, and two apples. John seemed pleased with the selection as she handed him the change.

He ate a donut in two bites and washed it down with some milk.

Max ate her donut as she wondered about the credit card.

Obviously, ammunition, gas, food, and the motel room she had woken up to after the demon attack would cost money. But…was the credit card fake, or was there a John Quagmire out there somewhere footing the bill. Did that mean that he didn't get paid to hunt the supernatural? Was it illegal? She already knew from how he had approached the subject that it was secret. But the government funded lots of secret things, for example, the transgenics. Did that mean the government didn't know about the supernatural?

Max couldn't ask without blowing her cover.

She did indicate his general wallet area once they were on the road and ask, "Quagmire?"

John was confused.

"The credit card?" she asked.

"Oh," John said, understanding. "Right, I didn't steal it. I just applied for it. It's a fake name."

Max nodded a little relieved. She had been taught a little bit about economics at Manticore, maybe for those who would go into espionage and infiltration of the government to make it more efficient, and she had always felt that the system was faulted. Credit card companies made plenty of interest off of people. It didn't bother her a bit to see them footing the bill of people saving lives.

After that she was pretty relaxed.

Nothing was said until about six hours later when they stopped for lunch and gas.

John paid for the gas with a credit card, this one with the name of Bert Harkley, while Max went inside and bought food with cash. Max vaguely wondered why he did it that way, but mostly figured it was out of convenience.

After going to the bathroom, Max picked out some decent looking sandwiches, a bottle of juice, a bottle of milk, and two bags of chips. She figured he had liked the balance between healthy and unhealthy just fine earlier, so that was what she got.

She headed back outside to the truck, picking up the end of a phone conversation with someone named Bobby.

John saw her approach and wrapped the call up. "Yeah, we'll be there in probably two hours or so…alright, see you then, Bobby."

Max divvied up the food amongst the two of them.

"Hold tight for a sec," John said, putting his food in the driver's seat. "I'm gonna go hit the head before we take off."

Max nodded as she bit into her turkey sandwich.

She watched him go in the store, wondering if he was tired. He didn't seem drowsy.

She looked over to the seat where John's phone was. She took a sip of her milk. She looked back at the gas station and didn't see him through the window.

She put down her food and reached over to grab the phone. The last number, Bobby, was a South Dakota number. That was the person he was taking her to stay with. Did that also mean that he hadn't really planned to take her on any hunts on the way? He must have just said that to make her feel like less of a bother. That said a lot about him if he was able to read that from her since she had been trained at Manticore to hide most of her inner thoughts and emotions.

Max glanced back out the window, looking for John. He still wasn't there.

She decided to scroll through a bit farther. She wasn't completely familiar with phones, but she had played around enough on Mrs. Barrett's to know the general location of most things. She went to his contacts list.

There was over 100 contacts in his phone, and none of them stood out more than any others. Bobby's number was under an alias, Hilljack Joe, so she assumed that most, if not all of them would be under aliases, too. Or at least his closest contacts would be, in case his phone got in the wrong hands. It was what Max would do.

There were a few missed calls from a person named ACDC. She wondered if that was an acronym for something. She memorized the number since it was in the log so many times.

There was one call from a Standford, but that was a very old log. She didn't bother with it.

The faint sound of a bell went off behind her. She almost panicked, recognizing the sound as the bell on the door of the gas station, but she knew that would be more obvious than anything. She leaned over the seat as John came around the front of the truck. She pretended to not notice him as she dropped the phone back where it was just as the door opened.

He stared at her for a moment as she held two bags of chips.

Max gave a shrug as she smiled. "I like Doritos better."

She dropped the Lays in his pile as she leaned back upright into her seat.

John just shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I'm used to it."

Max raised an eyebrow and gave him a questioning look as she popped open the bag.

John started the truck and buckled in. "My sons," he said. "The older one would buy variety so that everyone could choose, but they both usually would eat their favorite anyway, so I would get the leftovers."

Max smiled.

"How old are your sons?" she asked.

John smiled. "One is 22, the other is 18."

"18, huh?" Max asked. "Do they go to college, or do they do what you do?"

"The younger one, Sam," John said with a smile. "He goes to Stanford."

Max heard the pride in that statement.

"The older one, Dean, hunts." John gave a chuckle. "And he's damn good at it, too."

Max smiled. Already, she had figured out that Sam was the "Stanford" from John's cell. She wondered why they didn't call more often if he was so proud of him. For that matter, why didn't he call Dean more often? What if he needed backup like she had witnessed John needing? Was it possible that Dean was ACDC?

Max finished her food deep in thought, and the last few hours seemed to fly by.

Pretty soon, they were pulling onto a gravel road in the town of Sioux Falls. That answered Max's question about going on a hunt with John.

John pulled up to a house that was on a junkyard. A big, lazy dog on the front porch of the house glanced up at them, but didn't do much else. John pulled onto a dirt road that went around the house to the back and parked next to a dusty van that was missing its hood.

"We're here," he said shortly as he got out. Max hopped out to follow him up the back steps of the house as he knocked on the door.

Max could hear movement inside as someone moved around. John either didn't hear this or didn't acknowledge it because he knocked again.

"I'm coming, I'm coming, jeez. Hold your horses. It's like it's the damn apocalypse," said a man's voice who Maxed assumed was Bobby.

The back door was flung open. There stood a man in a ball cap, jeans, and a vest. His beard was a reddish color.

In a way, he reminded her a bit of Jack, but he didn't smell like alcohol and, despite his gruff beard, he seemed to take good care of himself.

He didn't make a move to shake John's hand, though he did give a nod.

"John," he said. Then he looked at Max. "You must be Max. I'm Bobby."

Max was unsure of what to do. She didn't want to befriend Bobby if John didn't like him. But then why did he bring her here? She didn't want to alienate the person she was supposed to be staying with either.

Finally, she just settled on smiling at him, and, before she could do anything else, John was putting his hand on her shoulder and talking to her as he looked at Bobby. "Why don't you go outside and explore a little bit while I talk to Bobby."

Max nodded her head and turned around.

John and Bobby went inside the kitchen. They didn't shut the door. Instead, they just leaned back against the kitchen table and watched her. They didn't start speaking until she was about fifty feet away. Max put on a good show of throwing rocks since it was apparent they were going to talk about her, but every bit of her transgenic hearing was attuned into their conversation. And fifty feet was nothing to her, so it came in loud and clear.

Max bent down and picked up a decent-sized stone and threw it a distance similar to what she had seen other girls at the park when they threw.

"So what's her story? You didn't say much on the phone?"

"The family she was with was slaughtered. Demon."

"Okay, yeah, that sucks, but why did you decide to bring her to me? Does she not have any relatives?"

"No. Her parents died in a house fire when she was young. Sound familiar to you?"

Max threw another rock. Was that the thing she had said that had peaked John's interest? What was so important about her parents dying in a house fire?

"You think she's one of 'em?"

Max jerked, and the rock went directly through a window of an old, rusted truck. She winced, waiting for someone to yell, but they were completely invested in their conversation now.

"I don't know," John said. "Maybe, but the timing isn't right. I mean, she's only nine. Do you think it's possible he's started a new round of recruitments?"

"Could be," Bobby said. "So what, am I a babysitter now for all of these children?"

"No," John said. "She says her grandparents were hunters and that she was raised that way until they died about a year ago."

"I get the feeling you don't exactly buy that."

There was silence for a moment.

"I don't know. I didn't get much time to look her up, but she claims that she doesn't know what their last name is. She thinks hers if fake, and she doesn't have a birth certificate, so she hasn't been able to go to school."

"At all?"

"No, but she's smart. She loves to read."

Max picked up another rock and sent it sailing a little farther than the first.

"Okay, so you're scared that in the foster system, if she doesn't have a birth certificate, she could easily be abducted and nobody would know."

"Yeah, but also…" There was a long silence. "Bobby, I went in to face that demon and I went in half-assed-"

"As usual."

" – and I was pinned to the wall about to die. And this little nine year old girl barrels in and faces off with a demon she had just watched mutilate her sister."

"No kidding?" Bobby said slowly, in thought.

"I know. I'm still reeling from it myself. But that's not it. The demon possessed her, Bobby. It possessed her, and I hesitated to long to shoot. I thought it was the end again, but then she just kicked the demon out of her."

"What do you mean?" Bobby asked. "Like she spoke an exorcism?"

"No," he said. "I mean, I don't know. She didn't out loud."

Max bent down and picked up another rock.

After a moment, Bobby said, "That's not possible."

"I know."

Max threw the rock, but not nearly as far as the first two. These two were very suspicious of her abilities. She had to be careful around them.

Bobby spoke up, "Well, if she is one of those kids, then she's gonna be in for a world of trouble."

"Yeah, she is," John said eventually. "At this point, I don't think she has a choice in the matter, she's already involved. She needs training."

"I hear a 'but' in all of this."

"But," John said, "I can't train her myself."

Bobby must have glared at him because John went on to explain himself. "Bobby, you know what I'm hunting. It's too dangerous for a girl."

"It's too dangerous for you," Bobby muttered.

"I'm a full-grown adult. I can handle myself."

"You just said she saved your ass," Bobby growled back. "Look, I'm not sayin' you should take the girl with you, that'd just be stupid, but I'm sayin' you need someone there to back you up. You can't just keep chasin' after the mother of all demons on your own."

John just ignored what he said. "So you'll train her?"

Bobby let out a sigh. "Yes, I'll train her."

And just like that, Max was staying with Bobby.

DASDASDASDASDASDASDASDASDAS

"Max," John called out across the dusty lot of cars.

Max dropped the rock in mid-throw, as if she hadn't been eavesdropping, and headed for the house.

Halfway there, Max's telescopic vision picked up on the fact that John was trying to hand Bobby some cash.

Bobby waved it off. "Keep your money."

"She doesn't have any clothes," John warned, still holding out the money.

Bobby looked frustrated. "I can take care of the kid, okay?"

John just put the money back in his pocket and walked up to the backdoor to meet her. "C'mon Max, I have something for you in the truck."

Max followed him out, wondering what it was.

He opened his door and hit a button that made the hatch in the back pop open. He climbed up in the truck and rustled around in there. He would pick something up, examine it, and then shake his head and put it back. Finally, he pulled something out and made a positive noise. He turned around and hopped down from the truck. In his hands, he held a small caliper Smith & Wesson handgun.

Max eyed it, but didn't take it. "9mm?"

John smiled at her. "Sure is." When she made no movements to take it, he said, "It's for you, short-stop. Every hunter needs a weapon."

Max just shook her head no. She hadn't held a gun since Manticore. If she hadn't been willing to take a gun to save John's life, she definitely wouldn't be willing to take one to save her own. She didn't meet his eye.

He seemed to study her for a minute. "Okay, how about a knife?"

Normally, she would be okay with knives, especially since taking it would make John feel better about leaving her, but she seemed to have developed a phobia of those too now, as images of Lucy's mangled body flashed through her mind.

John took the knife back. "Okay, no knife." He pulled out a necklace. "Do you have a thing against jewelry?"

"No," Max said as she reached forward to grab the necklace. It was a silver coin with a star carved on the surface with symbols at each point of the star. The band was leather. She easily recognized the symbol from when she had been reading up on the supernatural in the library. It was a symbol of Solomon and believed to protect the wearer from attackers. "Thank you," she said softly, still running her thumb over the surface.

"Oh, and this," John said, pulling the money out that he had tried to hand to Bobby. "Save this money. You never know."

Max looked at him. "But, don't you need that money?"

John smirked and waved her off. "Nah, I'll get it back."

He kneeled down, rested one arm on his knee, and looked her in the eye. "Alright, I'm going to head out now. If you need anything at all, just let Bobby know. He'll take you to the store to get some new clothes."

Max nodded as she put the necklace on over her head.

John suddenly scratched the back of his neck and had a hard time meeting her eye. "Ah, I don't really answer my phone all that much. If there's an emergency, and Bobby can't help, you can call this number." He gave her a slip of paper with the number for ACDC on it. "He can be trusted. Memorize the number then burn it."

"Okay," Max said, though she already knew the number by heart. She felt a little sad. It felt like so long had passed since she had been living with Lucy. She nodded at him, feeling the strange impulse to hug him.

He stood up, ruffled her hair, climbed in the truck, and left.

Max stood out in the front yard, watching the road long after the dust had settled. She could feel Bobby watching her from the front porch.

Sucking up her courage, she turned around and approached the house.

Bobby watched her from the deck chair, not saying anything.

Max watched the dog carefully as she approached. A lot of dogs didn't like her. She figured she had too much feline DNA in her genetics. This dog watched her back, but didn't make any other move. Max sat down slowly and reached her hand out. The dog sniffed a little from where he lay, but didn't make any other movements. Taking that as a good sign, she reached her hand the rest of the way out until she was patting its head. The dog softly started thumping its tail as its eyes closed.

Max smiled.

"Rufus," Bobby said from his chair.

Max looked up at him.

"The dog's name is Rufus," Bobby clarified. "And you can just forget about playing fetch with him. He's a lazy SOB."

Max nodded and went back to petting him. She started to scratch behind his ears. The thumping got louder as Max's smile got bigger. She scratched harder.

The dog rolled over and showed her his belly. Max's grin about split her face. She moved up and started rubbing his belly.

Bobby grunted. "You'll spoil him treating him that way."

Max stopped and looked at him, calculating.

"By all means, you can pet him," Bobby said. "He doesn't get a whole lotta attention around here. Just don't come whinin' to me when he starts followin' ya all around the house and nudging you at dinner time."

"I won't," Max said, immediately going back to petting him.

"You hungry?" Bobby asked as he headed inside, leaving the front door open.

Max got up and followed Bobby in the house. She looked around. It didn't have a lot of the decorations that Lucy's house had. It was bare and dusty, until they passed the living room. It was overflowing with books. Max couldn't wait to get her hands on books and start studying the supernatural. She really wanted to help people.

She wondered if she could ever trust anyone enough to tell them her secret about being transgenic. Would they think she was some sort of supernatural monster that needed to be killed?

Bobby stopped in his tracks and went to turn around, "Hey, Ma—Oh, jeezus you scared the daylights outta me!" he said, staring at her. "You're too quiet."

"I'm sorry," Max said.

"Don't worry about it," Bobby said. "It'll be good on hunts. Just don't sneak up on me like that."

"Did you want something?" Max asked.

"Yeah, do you like roast?"

Max nodded.

"Good. That's what I've been eatin' on the past week," Bobby said, turning back around and heading to the kitchen. He pulled out a ceramic pot from a very empty refrigerator and set it on the counter. He fished some paper plates out of a cabinet and some silverware from a drawer. He plopped big scoops of potatoes, carrots, meat, and gravy onto three plates. "And let me tell you, it gets better every day."

Max wondered how many days of the year this man ate roast.

He glanced up at her as he shuffled two of the plates into the microwave. "Lots."

Max was confused.

Bobby grinned for the first time, and it made him seem much younger. "The answer to your question, 'How much do I eat roast?' The answer is lots."

Max vaguely wondered if he had the ability to read minds.

Bobby was pressing buttons on the microwave. "It's easy to cook. You just add water, meat, veggies, and let the crockpot do the work. If you're feeling fancy you add pepper, but mostly I just use salt. Lots of salt."

Max wasn't complaining. She already knew—despite her earlier concerns of a similar appearance to Jack—that Bobby was going to be nothing like Jack. He may have seemed gruff, but he was a good person. Besides, back at Manticore, they had only been allowed to eat what the transgenics liked to call 'slop.' It was a tasteless, lumpy mush that was infused with the vitamins that they needed.

And at Lucy's, her mother rarely was home to cook, so most of the time the girls ate what they could make. Max couldn't cook food to save her life—that wasn't something they had taught at Manticore, and Lucy was only a few years older than her, so the girls ate a lot of things from cans. Occasionally, Lucy would make grilled cheese, as long as Jack wasn't downstairs. He didn't like to hear any noise in the house other than his television.

So a home-cooked meal was A-okay with her.

While the microwave was going, Bobby buttered some pieces of bread. "Cups are in the cabinet next to the fridge, kiddo."

Max went to the cabinet. There weren't any regular cups, just a lot of coffee mugs. She got out two coffee mugs and went to the fridge to see what there was to drink.

There was a lot of Budweiser. Jack's drink of preference had been Busch.

Max was annoyed that she kept making stupid comparisons between the two. She shut the door to the fridge and went to the sink to fill the cups with water.

"Ah," Bobby said, stopping her. "You probably don't want to do that. Tell you what, we'll go to the store after we eat and pick up some things you like, but you'll probably want to go without a drink for dinner, otherwise, you're gonna be drinkin' water that tastes like rotten eggs."

"Sulfur?" Max asked.

"Yeah," Bobby said, apologetically. "It's the lines, not the best in the world, but it gets the job done."

Max put the cups back up as Bobby took the plates out of the microwave.

He sat one in front of her with a fork. Max took her seat.

Bobby sat the plate that hadn't been microwaved down on the floor. He whistled and called, "Rufus!"

Max watched the front door as the dog came absolutely barreling in. He could certainly move when he wanted to.

Bobby sat down for his own food, pointing his fork at Rufus who was engrossed in inhaling his dinner. "That is the only time that dog ever moves," he said taking a bite of roast. "That and when there are supernatural critters running around."

Max swallowed. "He hunts?"

Bobby looked offended. "Well yeah! He's a hunting dog."

"Yeah, but I read…um, thought that most dogs ran away from the supernatural."

"Not old Rufus," Bobby said. "He's gotta taste for their blood."

"Oh," Max said as she looked back at the dog, unsure of whether Bobby was being literal or not. She watched Rufus' big chops tear into a piece of meat with new contemplation.


	4. Chapter 4

Max was very efficient in the clothing store. Bobby gave her a budget, and Max went to town weighing her options, checking for utility and durability, and tallying up everything she needed. When she was done, she had four pairs of jeans, eight shirts of varying sleeve length, a light jacket, underwear, socks, pajamas, and a new pair of shoes. Bobby insisted she get a backpack for her clothes in case they ever needed to hit the road. And even then she came in severely under budget, so Bobby made her get a new bed set including curtains, blankets, pillows, and a round chair that he seemed kind of leery about but that Max had always thought looked cool.

The grocery store was less efficient. Max wasn't very forthcoming with favorite foods because Bobby eventually gave up asking her what she liked and started piling the cart full of junk food and sweets—things that apparently all kids loved. It was towering over with Doritos and Ding Dongs until Max asked if she could get some bananas. After that, Bobby put some of the junk food back and rounded the cart out with all of the food groups.

They were about to head out when Max asked if she could get some milk. Bobby said yes and was very surprised when Max came back with two gallons of whole milk.

Max had researched at the library in Los Angeles that the tryptophan in milk helped calm down her shakes.

When they got home, Max had been hiding her tremors as best as she could, but it was bad enough that she had gotten out one of those coffee mugs and filled it full of milk before all of the groceries were carried in.

She downed three mugs full before the tremors had subsided.

Now she sat leisurely at the table while Bobby emptied the bags into the cupboards.

He kept glancing at her as he came back for more food to put away.

Max ignored it as she sipped at her milk. It was pure, creamy heaven.

Bobby came back to the table and opened the plastic pink solo cups he had bought for her. Apparently his drinking staples consisted of coffee and beer. He gave her another look as he wadded the plastic up and threw it in the trash.

"So," Bobby said slowly, as he put the cups away. "You like milk."

It wasn't a question, but Max met his gaze and answered. "Yes."

Bobby grunted and went back to putting things away. He took out a pocket knife and sliced open the container on the bottled waters. "Well good. It's nice to know you can say you like something or not."

He eyed the gallon container that Max had kept by her side. It was already a third gone.

"We'll get more from now on," he said gruffly.

Max gave a very large, very feline smile. "Good."

Bobby turned around quickly and cleared his throat. "Good," he repeated.

Max just smiled as she watched his back while he wrestled some frozen pizzas into the freezer. After he was done, he looked deeper into the freezer, checking inventory. He closed the little freezer.

"C'mon kiddo," he said, heading out the backdoor.

Max hopped up to follow him, feeling rejuvenated and curious. She trailed him as he navigated around a row of cars and walked up to a shed/garage type building. He flicked on a light. Inside there was a truck and a small white car. Against one wall, there was a wooden bench that spanned every thirty feet of the length of the garage. It was covered in tools. Bobby headed to the other side of the garage and walked up to a large, box freezer. He pulled the lid up. Inside, there was maybe twenty white packages with labels such as steak, ground meat, chuck, ribs, and roast.

"Hmm…" Bobby said. "Looks like we're gonna have to go hunting soon." He put the lid back down. "How about tomorrow? I'll take you hunting and we can see how good a shot you are."

Max fidgeted a little. "I don't really like guns."

"You don't?" he asked. "But John said…"

"I know a lot about them like how to take them apart and clean them. I had a lot of experience with them. But I…" Max certainly hoped she could keep up with all the lie and half-truths she was telling. "I watched one of my friends get shot. I haven't touched one since."

"Hmm…" Bobby said. "Well, that's going to be a problem. I reckon you're not too fond of knives anymore either, are you?"

Max shook her head.

"Well that puts a big dent in what hunts we can take you on. Most supernatural creatures are either killed with a knife or a gun," he said thinking.

Max felt ashamed. She wanted to help people, but she didn't think she could do it.

Bobby's eyes followed along his wall until they rested on something. "What about a bow?"

Max followed his gaze. On the wall was a simple bow. At Manticore, they had taught them how to use crossbows, but they never taught them how to use regular bows and arrows.

Max shrugged. "My grandfather taught me how to use a crossbow."

"It's a lot different than that," Bobby said, walking over and getting the bow down from the wall. "Crossbows are almost like guns. Some states don't even let you use 'em in archery contests. It'll take some getting used to, but we'll give her a go. Gotta start you somewhere. We'll practice in the morning. I have some targets somewhere I can dig up."

Bobby dusted the bow a little. "C'mon. Let's go inside. I'll show you to your room, and you can put away those clothes we picked up."

He took the bow in with them and sat it down on the kitchen table as he picked up the bags, leaving Max with just pillows to carry.

Max followed him up creaky stairs to a narrow hallway. There were two doors.

"First door's the bathroom. I have my own downstairs with me, so feel free to take over. The second door is your bedroom." He opened the door.

Inside was a small room with two windows that faced the front yard. There was a double bed, a closet, a desk with a chair, a bedside table, and a dresser.

"I know it's not much," Bobby said, placing the bags on the desk. "But it's all yours."

Max's throat felt a little tight and her eyes stung. "Thank you, Bobby."

He smiled at her. "No problem, kiddo."

She just kept standing there, looking around and wondering when her life had gotten so much better.

"Well," Bobby said. "Let's get these old blankets off your bed, so you can put your pretty purple ones on."

Max nodded and moved to help him. She didn't necessarily pick out the blankets. She had been ready to pick up a white quilt that was thin, yet warm so that it could be used year round. She didn't even necessarily like the color purple, but, after Bobby had turned down the quilt, Max had studied his line of sight and picked out one of the more "girly" blanket sets he had been eyeballing.

It had made him smile anyway, so Max didn't mind them too much. If she got too hot, she could just kick the thick comforter off and use the sheets.

Bobby held the old blankets and hovered in the doorway. "Well, I'm just gonna go put these in the laundry. I think I'm gonna stay up and check the arrow, make sure it's good to go in the morning. You rest up and I'll see you bright and early in the morning."

Max nodded her head. She finished making the bed and stepped back to admire it. It wasn't too bad actually. She actually did like the colors a bit. It made the old, wooden room seem alive again. She went about putting all of her clothes away. They easily fit into the dresser. Next, she decided to put away the toiletries and use the bathroom. She grabbed the bag of toiletries and some pajamas.

The bathroom had a sink, mirror, toilet, and shower. Everything she needed. She went about putting everything away. Bobby had even gotten her new purple towels to go in the bathroom. She felt he was having more fun with the shopping than she was when he tried to get her to pick out a bathroom rug. Thankfully, she had talked him down from that.

Just for good measure, Max went ahead and wiped everything down. When that was done, she took a shower and brushed her teeth. After that, she went back to her room, turned off the lights, and laid in bed, listening to the sounds of Bobby tinkering in the kitchen as he sipped at a beer.

She closed her eyes and tried to go to sleep.

After an hour, she was still awake, and so was Bobby.

She padded down to the kitchen on silent feet, subconsciously missing all of the creaky spots on the stairs.

She stood in the kitchen doorway, watching Bobby work on restringing the bow. He kept adjusting the tightness by turning the knob at the top and then pulling the string back. It seemed very similar to tuning a guitar.

He put the bow down and reached for his beer. As he did, his eyes wandered and landed on her, causing him to jump and nearly spill his beer.

He pointed at her. "We're getting a cowbell for you."

Max almost smiled.

Bobby took a sip of his beer as he assessed her. "Can't sleep?"

Max shook her head no, but didn't offer an explanation. He would probably assume it was nightmares or something. And part of it was, just not all of it.

He picked the bow back up and nodded at the chair across from him. Max came in and sat down.

Bobby went back to tuning the bow while Max watched.

Finally, about an hour later, Bobby was yawning, and Max was wide awake.

"Well kiddo, I'm gonna head off to bed now. I already set up the targets outside, so we're good to go. Be ready to be up bright and early."

Max went upstairs, got in bed, and stared at the ceiling.

It was another three hours before she fell asleep.

DASDASDASDASDASDASDASDASDAS

Apparently bright and early was not any time before eight o'clock in the morning.

Max was dressed and ready to go for the day by five, but Bobby was still in his bedroom, snoring. Max went around the house checking for creaky boards, hidden cupboards, and forbidden objects. All in all, it was a rather boring house. At least, it was until she got to the study. There were tons of books, half of which looked ancient. There was a fireplace and a desk, but that was all there was room for. Books were piled high on window sills and tables, and when those were filled up, in great, towering stacks on the floor.

There was a door in there, but it was locked. From her mental blueprints she had made of the house, either it lead to a closet or was the entry to a basement. Max put her ear up to the door and knocked. It echoed and disappeared.

It was definitely a basement.

She decided to save that for another time. Right now, she was dying to go through Bobby's library.

She started with glancing through all of the titles, remembering locations of the ones that she wanted to read first.

None of the books that she had skimmed through at the library were in Bobby's collection. Max was only surprised by the fact that not a single one of the two hundred books were good.

Max walked over to the desk, noticing some books that were out and open. One was open to a section on summoning and trapping rituals. She picked up pieces of notebook paper that were scattered across. The handwriting was a messy scrawl and form of short-hand with only the necessary words written down.

She put them aside and started sliding books around. There was a thick layer of clutter on the desk. Her hands hesitated when they ran across something soft. She dug down until she found it again and pulled it out. It was some sort of animal hide-bound book. It had several slips of paper sheathed among the pages of the book, being held in by the string that tied the book shut.

Max sat down in the chair and untied the book. She opened it to the first page. There was a handwritten passage on the first page along with a picture of a brunette lady. Max looked the photo over for a second before placing it down. She read the passage. It was done in the same masculine handwriting that had written the notes, but it was much more legible. It was a story of sorts.

About Bobby's wife.

Max skipped ahead in the book, feeling wrong to invade his privacy like that. Two pages later, the passage was over and there were handwritten notes, not the shorthand thankfully, about demons. Max leaned back in the chair and started reading. All of the stuff she had researched already had only been theoretical. Bobby's book was dense, meticulous, and practical. Everything in here had been tried and tested by Bobby himself. He was definitely a researcher.

Max began absorbing every word.

While Bobby seemed to specialize in demons, he also faced off with many other things. Max learned invaluable information. Everything Bobby had researched and done in the past ten or so years, Max now knew. She saw what he meant when he said that she would have to get over her aversion to guns and knives. Majority of the things were killed by one of the two. She couldn't really kill anything as it was. She could shoot flaming arrows into Wendigos, incapacitate vampires temporarily with dead-man's-blood tipped arrows, and pour salt lines to keep things out. Anything else required a gun or stabbing.

Max frowned.

Maybe she could just work with a partner. Max was good with memorization spells. She already had all of the rituals and Latin verses from Bobby's book memorized. Surely she wouldn't be hurtful to the cause if she was on a team. She could pull her own weight. Maybe Bobby could do all the shooting with her as his personal bodyguard.

Not that she would be able to be a very effective bodyguard until she explained to him why she was so strong, fast, and capable.

Bobby's breathing changed from the other room. Max scrambled up out of the chair and buried the journal back under the pile of papers just as she heard him get out of bed.

Max decided to go into the kitchen and look busy. She may not be able to cook a thing, but she certainly could wash dishes.

That's how Bobby found her when he came out in his housecoat and slippers.

He stopped mid-yawn when he saw her. "How long you been up, kiddo?"

Max shrugged her shoulders. "Since five. I thought you said we were getting an early start."

"Yeah," Bobby said as he headed towards the coffee-maker. "8 a.m. is an early start for you young people."

Max didn't really want to have to stay in her room until after 8 everyday just to pretend she was normal. "I'm used to getting up early."

"Oh," Bobby said uncomfortably. He pulled out an iron skillet and put it on the stove. "Well, I don't have a whole lot for you to do that early."

He went to the fridge and got out some eggs and bacon.

Max very hesitantly supplied, "I like to read." She gauged his reaction.

He didn't even blink an eye. He just cracked an egg on the side of the pan and poured it in with a loud sizzle. "What do you like to read?"

"Anything," Max said.

"Well," Bobby said, turning to her as he threw the shell in the trash. "I gotta lotta books around here. Feel free to help yourself to all of the ones that don't have demons or witchcraft in them. Those, I prefer you ask me before you read. Other than that, we'll see if we can get you down to the university library and check some books out."

Max nodded, excited.

"Good then," Bobby said. "That's settled. Now make yourself useful and cook us up some buttered toast."

Max burnt the first four batches. After that, he sent her to the cutting board to cut some apples. Max thought he was going to make her use a knife, but instead he pulled down an apple slicer.

"Don't burn these," he said grumpily but placed the cutter gently down in front of her.

Max grinned when he went back to cooking the bacon and eggs, mumbling to himself about how cooking toast was practically foolproof.

It didn't take them long to finish breakfast and head outside. Sometime before Max had come down last night, Bobby had drug a car bench seat out into the pathway behind his house. Attached to it was a large target with numerous rings on it.

Max followed Bobby until he stopped about twenty feet from the target.

"Alright, kiddo," Bobby said, turning to her and handing her the bow. "I don't know how you learn best, but I can give you some of the fundamentals of shooting arrows if you want."

Max shook her head. "My grandfather taught me enough about crossbows."

"Okay then," he stepped back. "Well, have at it. I hope you don't mind me watching. I want to get a good idea of your skill levels."

Max nodded. Normally, like with throwing the rocks yesterday, she would play down her abilities, but he was assessing her to see how well she would do on a hunt.

Max recalled everything she had learned about bows from Manticore, which wasn't a whole lot. They had taught them how to use crossbows, but, like Bobby had said, they were a lot different from regular bows. She decided to just shoot and see what happened. There were only so many technicalities and physics you could study before you had to just actually do it and go from there.

She notched her arrow, pulled back on the quiver, aimed, and let the arrow loose. It shot from the bow with amazing speed. It hit the seat with a solid _thunk_, but it was in the far corner and nowhere near the target.

"Good, good. That was a great first shot. It might help if you stand like this," Bobby said as he corrected her form a little.

Max shot again. This time, she watched its trajectory with her faster than normal reflexes, noting the way the arrow sliced through the air. Its path was affected a little by the air itself because it was slower than the crossbow. It hit the seat a little closer to the target.

"Good," Bobby said. "Your form is good. Now all you have to do is figure out the…"

But Max had already learned how the arrow would sail through the air, and she let another arrow loose before he could finish his sentence. It went through the air. Max watched its path curve until it was heading directly into the bull's-eye.

"…the aim," Bobby finished slowly, staring at the arrow. He gave her a sharp look. "Do it again."

Max did it. It hit the center of the target once again, making the other arrow quiver.

"You sure you haven't done this before?"

"No," Max said.

"Okay," Bobby said, still giving her a look. "Let's step back a bit."

They stepped back to thirty feet.

Max shot. The arrow was a little off, having to travel a farther distance, but she corrected that on the next shot and was brushing the other two arrows on the bull's-eye.

"Farther," Bobby said and walked back to sixty feet.

Max didn't even need a practice shot this time. She had two distances to go off of, so she had done the calculations in her head.

This time, Bobby walked back to about sixty yards. They were right next to the back door of the house.

Max shot and got the center.

"Again," he said.

Max shot it again. It went in.

"Well, hell's bells," Bobby said. He patted her on the back. "You're a natural, kiddo."

Max smiled and thanked him.

"Is there anything else you're that good at?"

"I'm decent at hand-to-hand combat and excelled at escape and evade."

"We'll have to test that out."

Four hours later, Bobby had tested her endurance, reflexes, and agility—all of which Max had passed with flying colors, which, in her opinion, meant playing back her abilities to keep him from getting suspicious but still impressing him.

"Your grandfather must have been one tough drill sergeant," he said to her as they were heading in for lunch.

Max stiffened up a little but relaxed when she realized that he was just kidding.

"Did John tell me he was in the army?"

"Yes," Max said, remembering her story. "He was a ranger."

"Huh," Bobby grunted. "Well, that explains it. Those are tough people."

"Yes sir," Max said.

"Well," Bobby said, pulling out some food. "How about chicken noodle soup and cheese sandwiches for lunch, then I'll grill you on your knowledge about the supernatural?"

Max was glad she had read his journal earlier.

Max gave him quick, concise answers back as she watched him brown the bread and melt the cheese.

"Huh," Bobby said. "Your granddaddy was extremely thorough."

"He wanted to make sure I was prepared to deal with anything," Max said.

"Well," Bobby said as he flipped the sandwiches with a metal spatula. "Normally, I don't agree with takin' kids on a hunt."

Max waited with baited breath, hoping there was a 'but' in there. She didn't want to keep just ignoring her training. Even if she never told Bobby her secret, she would still be able to help save lives with 'normal' human abilities.

Bobby looked up and smiled at the look on her face. "But," he drawled. "I might know of a ghost or two somewhere that I could use your help on exorcising."

Max grinned unrepentantly.

"There are conditions," Bobby warned, pointing the spatula at her.

"What kind of conditions?"

"Conditions like, you follow my lead and always listen to what I tell you, no matter what, or you don't get to go on hunts. And," he added, "you have to learn to trust me. I don't expect you to trust me now because you don't even know me, but that's okay. That's where the 'followin' orders' part comes in."

Max nodded quickly, happy to oblige.

"Now before you go sayin' yes, know that's not all. You are going to be home-schooled for your education, supernatural or otherwise."

"I'm good at math," Max volunteered.

"Good," Bobby said, putting a plate and bowl of soup in front of her. "I suck at it. You're also going to keep up on your training."

Max agreed quickly to that. It was something she did anyways to keep herself prepared in case Manticore found her.

"And…" Bobby said, "Later on, if you are ever going to want to hunt anything besides a ghost on your own, you are going to either have to get over your aversion to knives or guns."

Max paused as she ate her soup. Of course that made perfect sense, but she still couldn't get past the images of her sisters anytime she thought of a knife or a gun. Maybe she was permanently scarred.

"Now that that's out of the way, I know someone who I can call to help see where you are on hand-to-hand combat. One of John's boys."


End file.
